Rab let her go, and stepped away.
Will stood in the doorway, his eyes lit with a cold fury.
“First you cheat my mother out of her money, then you try to seduce her. Or have you already?” He came towards them, fists clenched.
“Will, be sensible,” Rab said easily, but Livvy felt him tense. “You don’t want to insult your mother—”
“Me? Insult my mother?” Will’s voice rose and cracked. “How dare you suggest it, when you’ve made a mockery of her, and of me, and of my father’s memory—”
“Will, your father has nothing to do with this. Your father wouldn’t have wanted to see another distillery fail—”
“You think my father would have wanted to see another man with his wife? You think my father wouldn’t have wanted me to defend his honor?” Will was within striking distance now, his fists raised.
“I think your father wouldn’t have wanted you to get hurt, Will.” Rab rocked forward on his toes. “I outweigh you by a good three stone. You’re going to regret it if I hit you.”
“Stop it, both of you,” shouted Livvy, but it was too late. Will’s right hand had flashed out in a blur of motion. Blood streamed from Rab’s nose, and then they were grappling and shoving, grunting with effort.
Livvy tried to pull Will away, but he flung her off into the dirt. Rab got in a punch that grazed Will’s head, but not even his weight and experience seemed a match for Will’s anger. They came together again, in a parody of an embrace, and for a moment Rab had Will pinned against the casks. Then Will twisted free, quick as a cat, and Rab spun with him. Will staggered back, then catapulted himself forward, stiff-armed, and gave Rab a shove that had all his weight behind it.
Rab fell, hard, into the casks, and Livvy heard the crack of bone against wood. Will was still on him, pum-meling wildly with his fists as Rab slumped to the floor.
“Will, stop!” screamed Livvy, clawing at him. “He’s hurt, Will.” At last she got her arms round her son’s waist and pulled him away. Only then did Will seem to realize that the other man wasn’t hitting back.
The smell of whisky filled the air, burning Livvy’s throat. The bung of the cask where Rab had hit his head had come loose, and whisky dripped to the floor.
She looked down at Rab Brodie’s crumpled form with
growing horror. Livvy’s mother had died in her arms, as had her baby daughter, and her husband. She knew the face of death when she saw it. Still, she knelt beside him, shaking him, sobbing as she stroked his cheek. There was no response.
“Dear God, Will, you’ve killed him,” she whispered, her voice cracking.
Will sank to his knees, as if his legs had suddenly refused to support him. “No. He can’t be. I’ll get help. The men are gone—I sent them home early, with the weather closing in, but I can go to the village—”
“Will, no.” Livvy felt an icy calm envelop her. She had lost everything that mattered to her, except her son. She would not lose him, too.
“There’s no help for him now,” she said. “We’ve no proof that this was an accident. Helen Brodie has powerful friends. I won’t have you go to prison.”
“Prison? But I never meant—”
“What you meant doesn’t matter now. If I hadn’t—”
She shook her head hopelessly. “Will, this is going to be between you and me, our secret. I won’t have you suffer for what I’ve done.”
“But we can’t—”
“We can. We’ll bury him here, beneath the casks. No one will ever know.”
But she would. She would carry Rab’s death with her like a mark, and for her, there would be no forgiveness on either side of the grave.
The confines of the old warehouse were dim, and several degrees colder than the outside air. Although it was not quite noon, the sky had darkened ominously.
Hazel stood, letting her eyes adjust to the light, looking round the cavernous empty space. The ranks of casks
that had filled it in her childhood were long gone, but for an instant, she thought she caught the faint scent of whisky. Had the angels’ share leached into the stone itself, a permanent reminder of the past?
No, she told herself, it was just her imagination, as were these dreams. But here the images seemed stronger, and if she closed her eyes she could almost hear their voices. Olivia and Will Urquhart, Rab Brodie.
She could put names to them now, if not faces.
Suddenly, she remembered a recurring childhood terror. There had been a spot in the warehouse, halfway down the left-hand side, that had always inexplicably frightened her. Had there been a reason for her fear?
With a swift decision, she left the warehouse and walked across the nettle-studded yard to the old barn. She dug around in a jumble of rusty tools, brushing cobwebs from her face, until she found an ancient spade. The wood of the handle was cracked, the head slightly loose, but it would have to do.
Going back to the warehouse, she stood in the doorway, closing her eyes again, deliberately placing herself within the dream perspective. Sweat broke out under her arms, on her forehead, as she felt again the panic of her dream.
She walked forward, slowly, twenty paces, then stepped to the left. The casks had stood here; the earth was packed as hard as concrete. When she jabbed the tip of the spade into the ground, the shock reverberated up her arms. But she swung again, and again, her face set in determination, until her hair was damp with sweat and her hands were numb.
She knew this ground; she knew there was only a shallow layer of topsoil over rock. If they had buried Rab Brodie here, they had not buried him deep. She dug on, beginning to wonder if she was mad.
Hazel had almost given up when her spade struck something more yielding. Dropping to her knees, she scrabbled in the dirt with her bare hands. There—she brushed away another layer of soil, more gently this time, except that it didn’t feel like soil. It crumbled in her fingers . . . was it peat? Beneath that, she felt something pliable, a leaf—no, it was cloth, a heavy cloth . . .
wool . . . a man’s coat, perhaps? The fragile scrap seemed to disintegrate even as she touched it, revealing the dark knob of a stick—no, it was bone, bone stained with the rich, deep brown of peat.
Hazel snatched her hand back and clapped it to her mouth, stifling a moan. She hadn’t believed it, even as she dug, not really, but now the grief in the dream came back to her as if it were her own.
Her eyes swam with tears and she began to weep, short, hiccoughing sobs that grew stronger until they wrenched at her chest. Was she crying for Livvy Urquhart and Rab Brodie, or for her grandfather, Will . . . or for Donald . . . and Tim . . . and herself?
The spasms began to ease and she sat back, sniffing.
She would have to tell someone—it was past time Rab Brodie’s death came to light.
The light voice came from behind her, making her heart jolt in surprise. “Hazel? What on earth are you doing?”
Hazel stood and squinted at the small form silhouetted in the doorway. “Louise? What are you doing here?”